Top Items:
Zusha Elinson / LAW.com:
Quinn Spills Value of Facebook Deal — SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook paid the founders of ConnectU $65 million to settle lawsuits accusing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for the wildly successful social-networking Web site, according to a law firm's marketing brochure.
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Eric Eldon / VentureBeat:
Winklevoss twins made $65 million on Facebook “copycat” settlement — Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss may have had some serious evidence showing that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole ideas like “profile pages” back when he worked at their social-networking startup, ConnectU.
Discussion:
Digital Daily
Fiona Ramsay / Marketing magazine:
Twitter to begin charging brands for commercial use — LONDON - Twitter is planning to charge brands for using the micro-blogging website. — Twitter — Co-founder Biz Stone told Marketing: 'We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them.
Discussion:
VentureBeat, HubSpot's Inbound …, The Blog Herald, broadstuff, socialized, the Econsultancy blog, IntoMobile and WebProNews
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Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Twitter To Start Charging Companies For Having An Account? — Companies using Twitter for commercial purposes may soon start getting charged for that activity, according to an interview British trade magazine Marketing (part of BrandRepublic) held with co-founder Biz Stone. — This is what Stone reportedly said:
Discussion:
Made By Many, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Pocket-lint.co.uk and Portfolio, Thanks:mrinaldesai
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
$99 iPhone Coming This Summer: RBC (AAPL) — Apple will start selling a cheaper, ‘entry-level’ iPhone sometime this summer, for around $99 after subsidy, according to “checks,” RBC analyst Mark Abramsky said in a note this morning. — The main cost reductions would come from fewer features …
Discussion:
GPS Obsessed
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Michael Kinsley / New York Times:
You Can't Sell News by the Slice — SOMEWHERE at Microsoft, there is a closet packed with leftover Slate umbrellas — a monument to the folly of asking people to pay for what they read on the Internet. These umbrellas — a $20 value! — were the premium we offered to people who would pay $19 …
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Nick / Rough Type:
Misreading newspapers — There has been much interesting speculation about the future of the newspaper business in recent weeks. There was Michael Hirschorn's pre-obituary for the print edition of the New York Times in The Atlantic. He foresees the Times shrinking into “a bigger, better …
MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Source: Apple asked Google not to use multi-touch in Android, and Google complied — One of the bigger complaints about T-Mobile's G1, the first phone based on Google's Android platform, is that its touch screen doesn't use multi-touch, the technology which allows for a screen to accept multiple points of contact as simultaneous input.
Discussion:
NEWSFACTOR, MobileCrunch, PC World, Contentinople, AppleInsider, Macworld, Pulse2, Network World, Android Phone Fans, CrunchGear, The iPhone Blog, Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac, Electronista, iLounge, SlashGear, Gearlog, Neowin.net, MacRumors, Google Android News … and Edible Apple, Thanks:sampad
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Google wants to tap into your electric meter; Enters smart grid fray — Google is developing home electricity dashboards for the future smart grid. — The effort, which dubbed the Google PowerMeter, is being tested by Google employees. Google is just the latest player interested in part of the smart grid pie.
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Ed Lu / The Official Google Blog:Power to the people — Imagine how hard it would be to stick …
Discussion:
Bits, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, Digital Daily, dailywireless.org, Scobleizer, TECH.BLORGE.com, PC World, New York Times, Network World, BetaNews, AppScout, Engadget, TechSpot and ChannelWeb, Thanks:atul
Brandon LeBlanc / The Windows Blog:
Reminder: General Availability for Windows 7 Beta Ending This Week — I wanted to quickly remind everyone that this week general availability for the Windows 7 Beta will be ending: — February 10th: Starting at 12am Pacific Time, no new downloads will be available.
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Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
Mozilla call for EU intervention in browser war is troubling — Mozilla has voiced support for Opera's effort to convince the European Commission to impose sanctions on Microsoft for bundling Internet Explorer in Windows. But is this a necessary or even a wise move for the open source developer?
Keith Stuart / Guardian:
How to become an iPhonedeveloper in eight easy steps — You've probably heard all about iShoot. Written by a programmer at Sun Microsystems in his spare time, this Worms-style artillery shooter blasted to the top of the App Store charts earlier this year and stayed there for weeks earning …
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Cisco's Cash Hoard Swells Along With Acquisition Rumors — With $30 billion, Cisco Systems likes to point out it has more cash on hand than any other technology company. So why did it just sell $4 billion worth of debt on Monday? — Cisco has been rather upfront about plans to make acquisitions.
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
How Microsoft is trying to make its $1.3b Fast Search deal work — Microsoft today will unveil plans to start incorporating Fast Search's technology into its products, rolling out a blueprint for capitalizing on one of the largest acquisitions in its history. — It still remains to be seen if the $1.3 billion deal will pay off.
Brad Linder / Download Squad:
Open source video player, aggregator Miro goes 2.0 — The team behind open source internet video player Miro have pushed out version 2.0. The new player features a new interface, improved speed and performance, and the ability for users to add links to online streaming video portals like Hulu and CBS.com to the sidebar.
Lidija Davis / ReadWriteWeb:
Craig Newmark's Keynote Unlocks the Secrets to Building a Community — In an era where user generated content is changing our entire culture, rare is the company that can successfully harness the collective creativeness of its community, cultivate loyalty, make money consistently, and continue to flourish.
John C. Dvorak / PC Magazine:
SEO Fiascoes: The Trouble with Search Engine Optimization — Long URLs are bogus! Tags like “nude” and “naked” are counterfeits! SEO is a big business, and from what I can tell its proponents are modern snake-oil salesmen. — Search engine optimization (SEO) has turned into a big business …
Michael Calore / Epicenter:
Twitter Fast Growing Beyond Its Messaging Roots — Thanks to its open-ended design and a thriving user community, Twitter is fast outgrowing its roots as a simple, easy-to-use messaging service. Enterprising hackers are creating apps for sharing music and videos, to help you quit smoking and lose weight …
Discussion:
Lost Remote
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Dell's uses Zink Imaging to create an ink-free mobile printer — Zink Imaging is steadily expanding its reach for a new inkless printing technology as it announces Dell will launch an ink-free mobile printer. — Bedford, Mass-based Zink Imaging figured out how to print without inkjet cartridges by embedding dried ink in paper.
Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Dell Latitude XT2 multi-touch tablet with 11-hour battery now official (starts at $2,399) — The machine translation is pretty weak, but Dell's 12.1-inch (1,280 x 800 pixel) Latitude XT2 looks to have just made its first tentative steps in a global launch. The video posted after the break …
Discussion:
eWeek, Gizmodo, Crave, The Toybox, DailyTech, Direct2Dell, Obsessable, CrunchGear, iTech News Net, jkOnTheRun and Mobility Site
Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
Apple's “sticky” iPhone — When Barclays' Ben Reitzes refers to the “stickiness” of Apple's iPhone, he's not talking about adhesives on the product's surface. (Indeed, the iPhone seems to us as slippery as ever, which may be why there's such a lively market in protective cases.)
Discussion:
Tech Trader Daily
Matt Hamblen / Computerworld:
Shhh: Whispersync could be the real news out of Kindle 2 — Syncing of e-book readers with other mobile handsets may be on the way — Computerworld) The introduction of “Whispersync” technology may well be the bigger technology news from Amazon.com Inc., which announced its Kindle 2 e-reader today in New York.
Harry McCracken / Technologizer:
A Consumer's Guide to Apple Rumors — There are many unique things about Apple, Inc. And one of the oddest of all is the degree to which straightforward reporting about the company's activities has been drowned out in recent years by a surging sea of rumor, speculation, prediction, and-increasingly—wishful thinking.
Discussion:
CrunchGear
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Intel: We're spending $7 billion on U.S. plants — Intel said Tuesday it will spend $7 billion over the next two years to roll out 32 nanometer manufacturing plants in the U.S. — The chip giant said the investment will be made in existing manufacturing sites in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico and create 7,000 jobs (statement).
Discussion:
New York Times, Business Wire, InfoWorld, CNET News, eWeek, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, Tech Trader Daily, Forbes and Electronista
Microsoft:
10,000 “Eureka Moments,” and Counting — Microsoft has been awarded its 10,000th U.S. patent for a unique way of interacting with surface computers. — The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently awarded Microsoft Corp. its 10,000th U.S. patent. The invention, U.S. Patent No. 7,479,950 …
PC Pro:
Mozilla reveals plans for Firefox 3.2 — Mozilla is planning to include simple-text commands and desktop web apps in the next version of Firefox. — Firefox 3.2 will see the company build the Mozilla Labs project, Ubiquity, into the browser. Ubiquity allows users to type natural language phrases …
Peter Burrows / Business Week:
Can Microsoft Catch Up in Mobile? — Going well beyond its current Windows Mobile software, Microsoft will try to extend its desktop dominance with a “Windows phone.” Is it too late? — Microsoft (MSFT) executives have long spun visions of a world where computer users …
Matt Shobe / FeedBurner Status:
Feed serving and FeedBurner application outage — Issue: FeedBurner stopped stopped serving feeds for about 45 minutes today, starting at approximately 9:15am PST. Most feeds are being served again properly, but we are still working to restore full service. feedburner.google.com …
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Silicon Alley Insider
